Clients refusing to work with off shore teams
Posted by Ragepower529@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 423 comments
Figured I’ll share this, it’s pretty interesting. We had two clients that renewed their agreements with our company and they elected for a higher level of support so that they will not be forced to work with any offshore teams and work with only US based service. The cost is way higher. Although people are worried about offshore. Trust me and users aren’t happy either. Just someone wants to save money.
The cost is an extra $200 user per month to not be put into off shore queues
Shrimp_Dock@reddit
I'd gladly spend the extra $200 a month too. These outsourced support people barely know how to google answers or read you possible solutions out of their KB. It's a pain.
Lughnasadh32@reddit
My biggest issue is getting someone that has an accent that is so think I cannot understand them.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
Its culture as well. I have a bunch on Indian mechanical engineers with masters-phd level credentials and expect IT to walk over and plug their laptop in for them. Like come on Diptesh (yes his real name), it is a frigging cable no need to have the 2 day a week IT desk-side person do it for you.
cbelt3@reddit
Caste is still a major thing. Despite it being outlawed
ExcitingTabletop@reddit
We had that happen in a company I worked for. The Indian dudes started fucking with a dude in a completely different department. There was no reason for them to talk to the guy for any normal business reason. We were confused, and it took way longer than it should have to find out it was caste discrimination.
Fun part, they tried suing the company for religious discrimination because we were interfering with their caste discrimination. No idea how it ended, off it went to the lawyers and we had it added to the new hire paperwork and training.
nartak@reddit
Ah right, their religious right to harass people. 🙄
JustInflation1@reddit
Every time! The right to hate!
radicldreamer@reddit
Act like it doesn’t happen in america also.
People hate gays because “of their religion” for example
nartak@reddit
We were literally talking about in America.
I eyeroll just as hard when other religious groups try too.
radicldreamer@reddit
I’m also in America, it’s ridiculous what people try to claim in the name of their religion
cbelt3@reddit
Ah, load of bollocks. The caste system is outlawed in India. Of course laws seem to have … less impact.. on elements of culture in that nation.
joefife@reddit
There is a fascinating BBC radio documentary about the caste system being important to silicon valley.
cbelt3@reddit
Also remember that education in India is also very caste focused.
rohmish@reddit
We made huge strides in late 90s and 2000s in some states (our education system worked mostly at the state level) but there was huge pushback in some states even back then and with current government it has gone downhill.
DonkeyTron42@reddit
One thing I found very interesting in the Bay Area is how Amway plays a major part in social ranking in the Indian community. I once got invited to one of those “meetings” by a former co-worker that got out of IT and went into real estate. I was probably one of two non-Indians out of around 500 people. There was everything from high ranking Fortune 500 executives to lowly software engineers. It was all a show of wealth and who can buy the most of their own product to increase their ranking.
JustInflation1@reddit
Sounds… fuckin retarded 😂
JustInflation1@reddit
What caste is IT?
notHooptieJ@reddit
we're computer janitors to 99% of users, that expectation isnt lost when caste is taken into account.
rootpl@reddit
Yes
UCFknight2016@reddit
Yeah and you get someone who is in the Dalit class when you call for support.
dbxp@reddit
I don't think the dalits are getting a job in a nice air conditioned office. They do jobs like searching sewers for gold dust: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/apr/19/scavenging-grime-sewage-gold-mumbai-streets-india
UCFknight2016@reddit
working in a call center sounds worse tbh
Mister_Brevity@reddit
I’ve found a lot of the super certed up Indian dudes completely fall apart in interviews when you ask them to solve a problem that isn’t from the material they absorbed via rote memorization.
Arudinne@reddit
We hired an Indian guy who aced the interview. One of the things we wanted Hyper-V knowledge. Guy couldn't even make a VM on a test server and resigned after a week.
rohmish@reddit
I'll never understand people who struggle with those things. I never had to train myself to do that. It's literally a wizard that asks you what you want, you tell it, and it goes and comes back with a virtual machine. (P.S. no hate, I'm Indian myself too, and I've seen plenty of people of other descent struggle with similarly easy tasks too so I know whatever this is, crosses the culture and ethnic line and affects everyone)
Arudinne@reddit
Yeah, as far as hypervisors go it has the lowest barrier to figuring out on the basics your own. I was using it on a secondhand power Edge 850 and Server 2008 back around 2010.
Raisin_Gatorade@reddit
And I can't find a job! Ridiculous and frustrating. Years of hard work that apparently means NOTHING.
Mister_Brevity@reddit
What the shit you can just Google how to do that
breakingd4d@reddit
Yeah.. a lot of them use exam dumps
Smtxom@reddit
Their cert schools were caught literally teaching from exam dumps rather than the material. We had a supposed CCNP Collab once from one of our providers trying to figure out a routing issue for our voip cube. Dude was literally following a script they gave him on how to troubleshoot voip. Wouldn’t go off script at all. It finally got so bad on the call that my CIO called our account rep and told him straight up “if you’re making us sit through this crap on the call you’re going to sit here with us and waste your time too. After 30min our rep finally said “ok, we’ll escalate it and get you someone stateside.” He knew that guy wasn’t a real CCNP Collab. My boss chewed their ass out the next day too. We eventually moved all of our circuits to another provider. Took over a year but we weren’t going to go through that crap again.
dapperwhippersnapper@reddit
I've seen this exact thing somewhere else. This is weird.
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
The culture, I’ve heard, is completely different. It’s okay to use all of the shortcuts if it gets you where you want to be.
I hope it’s not that way with medical school there.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
Also the culture is push it off on someone else if you can.
woodburyman@reddit
I feel this. We have two consulting firms we're working with currently for a manufacturing solution involving vision camera systems. One is a software side, the other is a hardware side. The business on the surface are US based, except only two individuals we deal with and the business are US based, the rest is Indian based, entire staff. The companies are the WORST to deal with and the culture within there companies including customer (IE our company) facing staff. Everything is focused on PUSHING everything off to other people. Given it was a hardware based system sold to us, they were supposed to set it up. The guys that came here weaseled their way into getting management to have our internal staff set it all up (Yet we paid $100k for this), and the guys that came out here that were supposed to do the setup literally, and I'm not joking, could NOT even power on a computer with a power button, nor plug in a power cable for their own equipment.
The whole project is beyond frustrating. They are being paid oodles of money by our State Government somehow to improve tech, and top of $100k+ from us, and they literally had a full fledged film crew in the other week to document it. Didn't once interview anyone that really set it up or runs it, just a dog and pony show for these company reps that flew in from another state to take credit.
ARobertNotABob@reddit
Where they like getting to is too often Ticket Closure, not Resolution.
rohmish@reddit
tickets closed on L1 is an actual metric a lot of service desks use. even here in Canada. It's a completely boneheaded way of doing things but management gotta manage.
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
When management prioritizes ticket closure metrics over satisfaction and quality…that’s what they’re going to get, especially if the atmosphere is adversarial and domineering.
ARobertNotABob@reddit
Painfully accurate.
rohmish@reddit
Nonmedical, architecture , etc. usually isn't like that. it's an engineering discipline problem for the most part in higher education. Not every university is like that but people who graduated from those that do it right typically aren't working for an outsourcing firm making $120/mo. (yes, usually the PayScale for L1-L2 support jobs in India is that)
Not to mention that these companies usually expect you to stick to your script. they absolutely do NOT want you to go above and beyond. It's a well known thing and education system in smaller cities and towns where most of these employees are from are optimized to churn out candidates that are good at following instructions and nothing else.
radicldreamer@reddit
I can’t speak for material etc, but I work in healthcare and have a friend who is an American of Indian decent and his parents sent him to India specifically because it was less school than in the USA. He still had to pass licensing when he got back to the states but it knocked some significant time off of his training. I believe Mexico is the same way.
This in no way means that it’s worse, it’s just less training, I’m sure the outcome depends on the person learning.
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
I think with your friend, it likely is “the person learning”. I can’t speak for the materials; rather, I’m talking about a culture that considers it okay to cheat on a test to pass it, learns by rote only rather than creative problem-solving, etc. That may or may not also have to do with the caste system, which IMO unfortunately breeds entitlement among some.
I would guess that an individual motivated to succeed without shortcuts (which would likely be your friend) would likely use the materials, not cheat, lie, or use outside influence as a replacement for learning, and would think things through. If capable, they would do just fine. Your friend was also raised outside of India and so part of a different culture, then moving back to the same place of different culture after their schooling.
metalwolf112002@reddit
Your arm is broken?
bonesaw
Broken arm no longer present, issue resolved.
awit7317@reddit
Doing the needful
blue_i20@reddit
Kindly
Kraziel2530@reddit
Revert when done
Time_Turner@reddit
I think that's just generally the case with Asian cultures other than those in the South East. China is huge on 'whatever it takes to get what you want'. As long as you aren't hurting China or the party (at least obviously), you are in the clear for cheating and taking shortcuts.
breakingd4d@reddit
Oh my god I went through 8 proctors this morning for my Aws security exam and still never got escalated
dasunt@reddit
Our offshore company is doing something similar. Having worked with them, I get the impression that their employees have gone through a week or two of boot camp on the topic and don't have a strong IT background.
It leads to situations where I have more of an ability to troubleshoot an issue than they do.
Contracting companies compete on price, which results in them paying their workers non-competitive wages, resulting in an inability to attract talent.
Overall, it is a management problem - when management sees IT as a cost center instead of a force multiplier, they'll cheap out on off-shoring. As a result, off-shoring tends to be crap.
grimtongue@reddit
I once had an Oracle DBA contact me because his script failed to install. The error was very clearly said a directory did not exist. He went through multiple layers of support to finally get me to run
mkdir
for him.murzeig@reddit
Happens over and over. These are the people who argue with me when I proctor their test and give them clues and hints. Ffs
bobcathell@reddit
As someone who worked with a good amount of Indian end users, I think it's just engrained in their culture to not do anything they are not explicitly given instruction to do so. If there is no manual or step by step instructions then they cannot continue. There is no "figuring it out".
BisexualCaveman@reddit
I get the same damn thing when I send work to the Philippines.
radicldreamer@reddit
Then why send work there at all? Is it really worth the hassle?
rohmish@reddit
those aren't the questions management is asking. You can still get quality work done in India, and I'd imagine in the Philippines too. But you need to work with the right contractors and they charge you for it. When businesses are looking to outsource to Asia they aren't looking to reduce costs by 5-10%, they want a 50% reduction with an increase in the number of bodies being thrown at the problem. it sounds better to say "I cut IT costs in half but we have double the number of people on desks right now!" than to say "I know IT can no longer be at your desk in person, but we're shaving off 5% of total costs every year!".
radicldreamer@reddit
Which is why we see the constant cycle of “out source, it saves money!” And then after a few years of shit service “we brought everything back ,we are increasing employee satisfaction and productivity!” And the C level suite pat themselves on the back and the person that originally suggested outsourcing gets a bonus for saving money and when they suggest bringing it back they get a bonus for increasing satisfaction and productivity. It’s insanity.
BisexualCaveman@reddit
I was sending retail customer service work there.
Once you get proper scripts and documentation, it actually works fine.
Not for tech stuff, though...
radicldreamer@reddit
That makes a lot more sense. Sorry if it came off wrong, I really try to keep discussion civil, but have legit discussion.
mallet17@reddit
They constantly reaffirm any actions from a superior.
No joke, I get asked 20 questions for specific tasks, and I try getting them to think for themselves, which ends in failure. They don't want to make any mistakes, but how else are you to become autonomous?
Separate_Paper_1412@reddit
Their culture tells them they must not be autonomous.
rohmish@reddit
it's less of a culture thing and more of an education thing. Once the outsourcing business started to boom in 90s and 2000s, education systems quickly pivoted to make "ideal candidates" which involved stifling free thinking from a very early age. We ended up with an education system where using an alternative way to come to the same result would get you scolded. Where you are expected to stick to instructions at every step of the way, and where you need permission from superiors for everything. and the current government did not help by gutting a lot of good parts and encouraging the aforementioned qualities.
wrosecrans@reddit
There are certainly folks who rise above that culture and are super creative. One of the guys I worked with at my previous employer was the Indian guy who was head of research and his whole job was just running bleeding edge R&D stuff that nobody else in the org was thinking about, and his team presented papers at conferences about novel topics.
But those are exactly not the folks you find in bottom-dollar L1 offshore IT support gigs. Those guys leave and go somewhere their skill set is valued the second they have an opportunity. If companies were paying $100,000+ US per year salaries for the people in India, the quality available in that market would skyrocket instantly.
An-kun@reddit
Sounds a lot like the German end users I have had to deal with in the past.
snowsnoot69@reddit
Facts. My manager says our HCL contractors won’t move a pencil without being told to do so haha
dd027503@reddit
The best is when they do learn how to do something and then it becomes enshrined as "the way" you do something. No nuance, caveats or context. And they will stick to that way come hell or high water. It's like write once read only when it comes to how they treat knowledge.
bolunez@reddit
This is exactly it. Every offshore team I've ever worked with would do exactly what they're instructed to, no more and no less.
oldvetmsg@reddit
And my co worker and I thought we've been winging it the last couple of years. Guess we aight...
LovecraftInDC@reddit
God forbid I have to work with anybody who believes themselves to be genetically above anybody else, whether they're from Bangalore or from Boston.
Superior3407@reddit
From Boston, can confirm I'm genetically interior
wrosecrans@reddit
I am currently on a kind of sabbatical from tech to make an indie film. And one of the first things I made sure to establish in the setting of the film is that Boston has been nuked.
If nothing else, at least I accomplished that much.
Eddit13@reddit
From the Pacific North west - can confirm I am genetically exterior
H1king33k@reddit
I grew up in the south, moved to the midwest, and now live on the west coast. I’m genetically posterior.
Silent_Forgotten_Jay@reddit
Can confirm you're inferior. I can sense my own....
Fallingdamage@reddit
I had some family spend 6 months in India and they were appalled by the total lack of urgency in any task or schedule set by anyone in that country it seemed. Things got done when they got done, people showed up for meetings 6 hours late with zero remorse, nothing was ever anyone's problem to solve, and issues just piled up with nobody taking responsibility. Complete systemic apathy and no accountability.
Its no wonder that country is so dysfunctional.
Best_Temp_Employee@reddit
I managed a team in India for about 16 months. I found that they have very deep knowledge on a specific subject, but it was difficult to find anyone with a wide scope. I finally decided to hire specialists from there, them level 1 & 2 support in the US. This allowed customers to explain their issue to someone in the US, then if it needed to be escalated, that agent would assign it to the Network, Database, and Software Engineers in India. Originally I was shocked that a DBA didn't understand basic networking, once I accepted that it was easier to be successful and leverage everyone's strengths.
u35828@reddit
Diptesh is acting like a dipshit again.
JerikkaDawn@reddit
This feature of PHDs isn't specific to any region or culture.
r_u_sure@reddit
First IT job was as a summer student at a children’s hospital. I constantly had to walk to the video conference room to turn on the TV because the 6 specialized doctors in the room couldn’t be troubled to pick up the remote
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
That's a special breed. At least in the US, getting into and through medical training is virtually impossible unless you're 10000% focused on grinding out a stellar academic record. The medical profession hasn't done what the law profession did and increase supply of education slots, so you have a group of the best of the best of the best when training is over. This, and being told they're the most brilliant person on Earth by everyone doesn't exactly make humble doctors with small egos. Not a surprise they expect everything to be done for them, especially when the entire healthcare system is set up so junior doctors and nursing staff are explicitly beneath them.
I've heard all sorts of doctor entitlement stories from people I know who work in healthcare IT...you're lucky you got them to sit in the conference room without being escorted there.
mallet17@reddit
PhDs are a bunch of proud and particular weirdos.
I was dining with a bunch of friends, ordering shared plates and the guy more than double-dipped his own utensils and ate off them too.
When it came to pay, he didn't even lift a finger to reach for his wallet.
anxiousinfotech@reddit
I did tech support for professors in college, can confirm. It didn't matter their cultural background. It was a combination of the ones who felt it was beneath them to do anything outside of their area of expertise, and those who were so absorbed in their area of expertise that they had zero ability to function outside of it.
tildesplayground@reddit
This kind of behavior tends to get delayed tickets. Make us come out for something so inane because you want to Lord it over our team? All of your future tickets sit for a minimum four days for "research". Being rude or demanding, snapping fingers gets a group complaint to hr and you support privileges of phone, chat, & email are revoked. Hope you like communicating through support tickets....
TexasVulvaAficionado@reddit
Yep. We have SLAs for everything. The vast majority of them are 8hr response time, then 8hr evaluation, then 8hr fix, then 3 days of review. These are also business hours. These kinds of users get the privilege of reporting something Friday morning, have a tech assigned Monday, fix applied Wednesday, then if it something that requires a review before release, like a code fix or a HR, legal, or security issue, they might get access back the following Monday.
We 100% tell everyone involved that the user's past behavior has affected the team's willingness to pick up their tickets.
Usually, one bump against that organizational beast, they fix the attitude, but twice I've seen people fired because they thought they could steamroll themselves through it...
tbsdy@reddit
That’s because they are all cheating like crazy.
JustInflation1@reddit
We had a Phd at my job like this. Coming in pounding his fist on the desk. Got fired about 2 months in.
dd027503@reddit
It's not just Indian mechanical engineers.. I have absolutely met secretaries and assistants who try their hardest to pawn off their job duties to IT via tickets because "computers."
DrunkenGolfer@reddit
I kid you not, I am currently working with “Arse Deep”, “Deep Shit”, and “Rat Shit” and, as a native English speaker, it is hard not to laugh.
oldvetmsg@reddit
Hi Sam Mr DipShyt and saltykrak are ready to discuss your yearly appraisal.
mallet17@reddit
Gagandeep would like to interject.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
I worked with a Chinese guy named “yum ting pong”. I had to make sure I never say “some thing wrong”
mallet17@reddit
You can't beat Sea Gull Ng...
NimbleNavigator19@reddit
Wi Tu Lo?
UCFknight2016@reddit
My favorite is I was stuck on HPE support for a SAN and started talkinga bout my LUN and apparently that means something funny in Hindi. They were laughing hard in the background.
DrunkenGolfer@reddit
“Lund”. Basically means dick.
50YearsofFailure@reddit
"Your lund isn't... connecting, sir? Have you tried extending it?"
oldvetmsg@reddit
Sorry Friday whiskey but did you detach you attach a new lun so we can close the ticket
drosmi@reddit
A former boss was the storage admin and he clued me in. It is kinda funny.
BuggyBagley@reddit
So you don’t want to do the job you are paid for?
Stonewalled9999@reddit
Are you a troll or just not smart ? Diptesh would rather wait 3 days staring off in to space for IT to come on site rather than plug in something. Has nothing to do with “not my jobitis”. My wife doesn’t wait for mechanic to pump her gas she can figure it out
Parking_Media@reddit
"diptesh is wasting company resources by exploiting the IT department to do menial tasks" - letter to manager
AdComprehensive2138@reddit
Lolol is this monster.com? Because their programmers and engineers did just this....every week
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
It depends on the contractor too.
I’ve seen too many places where I swear people are given a stack of 3x5 cards when hired. Half of them have “I am sorry to be hearing you have a problem with our fantastic product, sir.” The second half have the top five solutions (as if someone typed it out) for given scenarios.
I don’t have a problem with nationalities or ethnicities; I just want people with some technical knowledge. Usually I’ve already done what Tier I is asking, now I have to pretend to do it again for a day (even though I say “I have done A,B,C,D” in the opening of the ticket, which they ignore) then say “None of that worked, I also tried this” and maybe I’ll get escalated to someone who knows a little.
With Microsoft I won’t even get that; I’ll search to the ends of the earth before I contact them - which is exactly what they want.
fatcakesabz@reddit
Sounds very much like you have dell servers?
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
I do have Dell servers, but I use chat support there. It cuts down on the frustration, I have a record of the chat, and the most common issue is drive predictive failure, and that doesn’t require much if any verification.
Software is more of an annoyance.
MMEnter@reddit
I have solved countless issues that are fixed with a browser window refresh in a screen share after they told me they already refreshed the browser window. It goes both ways on this one.
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
That’s sounds like end user support based on what you’re saying (if I’m wrong, feel free to correct me).
I’m talking about engaging a vendor because I have an issue with one of my Entra tenants, or because is giving an unusual database error, or because of a bug I discovered through detailed testing of a complaint someone brought to me.
tkrynsky@reddit
If you can’t understand them, how will you “do the necessary”?
Lughnasadh32@reddit
It is ‘do the needful’ that I hear the most. lol
Otto-Korrect@reddit
This is the answer. If I can't follow what the person is saying and only catching every third word at best, then the money I AM paying is wasted.
dartdoug@reddit
One of my suppliers moved their sales team offshore years ago. Phone calls that should have taken about 2 minutes to place an order would take 10 minutes because I couldn't understand the "English" that the offshore person was speaking. I kept saying "Sorry, repeat that please...slowly..."
Eventually I stopped doing business with them because the company clearly had no respect for my time (and my sanity).
A couple of years later they dumped the offshore sales team and brought those jobs back to the U.S. I now do a bit of business with them, but not nearly as much as I used to.
The MBAs that come in and tell the CEO/CFO how much money the company can save by offshoring have no clue how much top line revenue they are going to lose by alienating customers.
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
In all IT offshoring scenarios, a small "VIP" team is kept onshore to ensure the executives never experience the horrible service the rest of the company does. They're available 24/7, sometimes speak nearly native English, and will fly out to the CEO's yacht if they have to to unjam a printer or reboot a device. This ensures that any complaints about how bad things have gotten will be dismissed out of hand, and since the execs live in their own little universe, the outsourcer is seen as an amazing crack team of experts.
RepresentativeDog697@reddit
I did an job interview at Microsoft for their azure support team in Dallas, and I could not understand a word my would be indian Manager said to me, I ended the interview the interview as politely as possible because we were getting no where.
lost_signal@reddit
I can't stand Boston southies, or Louisiana either.
GearhedMG@reddit
For me it's not so much the accent as I work with a number of Indian engineers, as well as other SEA team members, both on-shore and offshore, my issue is generally (and this isn't the case with our offshore teams, its when I have to call a vendor or deal with something in my personal tech realm) the environments, they are issued shitty headsets, and are sitting 15 inches from their neighbors in what sounds like an open market, its damn near impossible to hear them sometimes over the noise, or some other issue where it sounds like the microphone is about 6ft away from then so its impossible to hear because its so quiet, rarely anything in between.
Sportsfun4all@reddit
AI is coming for these level 1 customers support call centers overseas. At least ai will speak in no accent I can understand and it can gather the same KB answers quicker and accurately.
D3nnis_N3dry@reddit
I work a service desk for a company that has a ton of offshore contractors from India. It's very difficult even to get through a password reset with them because I can't understand them and I guess they can't understand me either lol it's horrible. Every time I see a +91 phone number show up on my phone I cringe.
NightMgr@reddit
We had 2 server admins from different parts of India on conference call who could not understand each other. It’s a country of multiple languages so that’s not surprising. But the CEO was insisting his people were perfectly understandable.
Scorpnite@reddit
Exactly. Accent so thick I can hear what they had for lunch
Charming-Log-9586@reddit
THAT is the problem. If it was Mindy Kaling or Aziz Ansari I could care less. I need to be able to understand them.
Viper896@reddit
Exactly this. And if something isn’t in their script, they have no idea what to do with it.
eagle6705@reddit
LOL worked with a NOC based in India (no surprise there). Anyway I called in to schedule some techs do do some overnight work (basically patching, security remediations) when the team lead i was assigned was John Smith.....The guy joked he's the token white guy and there were only 2 of them out of 800 employees.
Mehere_64@reddit
That is my biggest issue. Not being able to understand the person on the phone due to their accent being so thick.
Alex_2259@reddit
Calling vendors and most companies has just become useless. It's a constant shit storm and you are just trying to get to a different team immediately.
windowswrangler@reddit
Per user per month. If you're a small shop and you have only 10 people that's an extra $2,000 a month/$24,000 a year. You think that's worth it?
iiThecollector@reddit
I work for a security firm - a client of mine is locked in with an off shore support contract that they regret paying for. These people are so fucking horrible at their jobs that we have had to stop escalating incidents to them because they cant follow up with basic suspicious authentication activity or reimage an infected host if their lives depended on it.
Mailstorm@reddit
It's 200 per user, not just 200. So of the company is 100 people, it's an extra 20k per month.
radicldreamer@reddit
In most cases, I’d say it’s worth it. Extra time wasted not only reduces worker productivity but also their happiness. This does have an impact on the workforce.
amishbill@reddit
If you think the process of getting a problem fixed will be painful, users will waste a LOT of time trying to work around it instead of resolving it.
SpaceCptWinters@reddit
What kind of fancy place are you working that actually keeps a decent KB. I cry ...
DrenBla@reddit
20+ years in IT and this ((working with offshore) barely speaking English)) is always the worst part of the job for me. Puts me in a bad mood because I cannot hear their directions or have a decent conversation to put things back together. Once in a blue moon we’ll have one that is decently prepared.
radicldreamer@reddit
Kindly do the needful and provide the same logs that I asked for in the last 4 calls and I will take them and investigate with team and kick the can another day due to time zone differences.
ZealousidealTurn2211@reddit
Shit the most recent one I worked with straight up demanded we not do things our network team set out as requirements. It was a wild experience.
lost_signal@reddit
I've worked with some absolutely brilliant people in Bangalore. They are paid maybe 1/2 to 1/3 what the Bay Area engineers are... BUT they get 2/3rd of the same RSU package so really the delta on pay for senior resources vs. the cost of living they come out ahead.
They don't pick up the phone and do Tier 0.5 support for WITCH companies for (insanely cheap rates). They work for serious companies who have things they need done, and ned follow the sun engineering/support, and frankly are better than what you can hire that will pick up the phone at 4AM in the US (having been that person).
I've also worked with some absolute badass tier expats and H1B's who started over there and came to work in the US. They pay their taxes (sometimes 50% of their income marginal as RSU taxes in California end up brutal), they pay for local services.
olssoneerz@reddit
Good engineers are good regardless of where they come from. Any decent engineer from India (or the countries we typically outsource to) are for sure working on more critical roles / have already been moved overseas.
CeldonShooper@reddit
I've worked with very good and smart Indian colleagues and contractors. Problem is: Great engineers are also pricey in India so you don't get them for rock-bottom prices that many contractor shops offer to western countries as a bargain.
bobcathell@reddit
It took me 6 months with Google support to get them to escalate us to a US based engineer, who fixed our email issue in 1 day. We cycled through like 15 offshore people that didn't understand the issue (likely a language barrier).
ThatOldGuyWhoDrinks@reddit
I worked for a law firm in tech support and was made redundant as they were shifting the calls and chat functions to India.
4 months later I get a call practically begging me to come back because it had gone to shit. I gladly told them my new job had a 50% pay increase compared to what they were paying me and more opportunities.
Turns out lawyers, who bill there time were sick of dealing with India and the time it cost the company
j0mbie@reddit
It's not just that. Their metrics are partially based on the number of tickets they have to escalate. If they can get you to give up, they have better numbers.
Sportsfun4all@reddit
More likely an training and experience issue but language is a small part of everything
Wil420b@reddit
15 minutes of going back and forth, explaining to them on three different ways. To get them to understand what was in the initial support chat message.
EvilGeniusLeslie@reddit
My two favourite recollections of utterly brain-damaged outsourced tech support was one Indian lady asking how to spell SQL; the other suggesting I try rebooting ... the mainframe.
tdhuck@reddit
The help desk for the US company I work at has this issue. Sometimes it also depends on the person, as well. Our help desk is just not good. I'm not trying to be mean, just honest. They aren't good. They know more than the users to troubleshoot tech, but they don't know enough to do anything other than basic help desk. We aren't an MSP and I wouldn't let them speak to paying customers.
zSprawl@reddit
That is the fault of the company that outsourced thinking they don’t need to train them.
Alert-Main7778@reddit
Agreed. Nothing more frustrating than calling overseas in an emergency and getting someone barely trained who you can barely understand. It’s unacceptable for these prices
Scorpnite@reddit
And most of the time you can’t even understand them
vitaroignolo@reddit
I'd be happy if they could comprehend what I put in the initial ticket instead of having to reiterate my problem 3 times before they make a possibly relevant suggestion.
horus-heresy@reddit
or go to competition that has normal support
BiscottiNo6948@reddit
This is actually normal. Certain clients specially federal, defence or military or databases/services pertaining to military personnel (loans, VA, credit union) has a certain legal clause on the TOS that says their data should only be serviced by US based personnel (some has other stipulations about clearances and all).
metalder420@reddit
That’s not entirely true in the financial sector. I work in financial industry that services the military and we have offshore contractors. There is much more scrutiny to it when it comes to regulations though.
BiscottiNo6948@reddit
ttttggtgþþttttt
johko814@reddit
Hello CMMC/ITAR compliance.
NimbleNavigator19@reddit
Does anyone even care about ITAR at this point? It doesn't seem like it. I have a client who is the sole developer of a very important system in a very famous military vehicle that has Russian employees that live and work in Russia, specifically Moscow.
Fearless-Egg8712@reddit
Yes we do. We have a „normal” meeting room for usual meetings and a soundproof room to discuss sensitive ITAR topics.
Nova_Nightmare@reddit
Yes, they do. You should maybe think about cashing in a reward.
https://www.dlapiper.com/en-us/insights/publications/2023/04/bis-increases-incentives-for-companies-to-report-their-own-and-others-export-control-violations
THE_GR8ST@reddit
Yes, this is what I was thinking, too.
DontTakePeopleSrsly@reddit
Yup, our Netapp support contract is serviced only by us citizens with a clearance. It’s really nice for onsite support because they file their own VAR and don’t need an escort.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
I have a client that said "if I ever call your support and a foreigner answers I'm picking a new support guy" lucky for you I own the place, I'm the CEO and CFO and I have the bathroom cleaner and chief engineer here (the are all me)
Maeldruin_@reddit
Do you put on a different hat when you switch between those roles?
Stonewalled9999@reddit
I put on clean undies when I play C level staff but no hats
z0phi3l@reddit
I have a US based Indian friend who can put on a decently thick accent when needed!!
CannerCanCan@reddit
You could hire me remote. I wouldn't let you down. Imagine an American mimicking an Australian mimicking an American accent. I'd make it work and a bloke as dumb as your customer would fall for it.
z0phi3l@reddit
True, we have some services where that's an important question when assigning out a ticket, any offshore restrictions
reegz@reddit
Individual states have specific rules as well for certain records not being allowed to be accessed outside of the US.
Fallingdamage@reddit
Im in a position now where I make decisions on our contracts and who we do business with. Over the last 2 years I have moved us away from anyone who offshores their support. After 25 years in the industry, I have developed a total disdain for dealing with offshore technicians and company representatives. We're in the middle of a big communications upgrade and one of the criteria with this project is to make sure the business we engage is in our same time zone.
Narabug@reddit
This is what’s interesting. I’ve never met anyone that has a good experience offshoring. It’s only ever middle-management patting themselves on the back for “saving money” from bucket A, while drastically increasing costs to buckets B-G.
It’s kind of wild that it’s been decades at this point and management is still doing this shit.
Bimpster@reddit
They ain’t worth the money these companies are paying them. They don’t possess an ingenuitive mindset. Couldn’t solve a real problem without a scripted caselog. The real engineers are worth their weight in gold pressed latinum and hidden behind droves of mumbling idiots.
Mcuatmel@reddit
I wrote the azure deployment procedure for them, so my indian friends deploy virtual infra without issues. Bioterraform.
gumbrilla@reddit
Right, Im gonna say it. I've made it work. I've delivered a quality service via an indian L1 helpdesk, and I'm proud of it and them.
Here is how.
Do not do shared desk. Do not. Do it and you are fucked, and fuck you for trying.
Get on a plane. A lot. Bring presents, talk to eveyone on that desk. When the late shift comes on, your still there. Talking to them. They are young, first placements normally, they need to know you, and you them.
Get back on the plane, do it again. Nail the processes, standardise what you can, fix the tech
And again.. and bring colleagues.
When you get stars, fly them over. Having one lady fly over after a year of sterling service, we were an org of 6000, she met division directors, the CFO and CEO, they loved her, amd they new her because when they called she'd handle VIPs. (Bloddy hate VIP system, in my view Sales were VIPs, as they were on the road bringing in money, but I choose battles)
Get a great helpdesk lead/manager. They are around, 1 in 10 of those offered is about the ratio, but they are there.
Never let them fail to their bosses. The only email you send in blast is with something positive.
Find someone good? don't hold onto them. They want to move on, this is just a step, make the journey great. Find someone bad, well, a quiet word with the lead, use it rarely.
If the procurement person is hovering around penalties, tell them to fuck off as well. Its my budget. Trade infractions for favours. The account manager will thank you ten times over, and penalties leads to bullshitting, and it's, well Ive not seen it work.
What you are trying to do is make your desk a go to destination inside the larger org. HCL, Cognizant, don't care who. The good people will see this is somewhere to go, to achieve success, recognition and not get trapped. It will help your Lead no ends.
You need to break the fear culture. Alas, there is massive power distance, and fear of damaging careers so when in the grip of fear you dont get, well, the straight answers. Trust is earned, but its doable. If there was a problem, and some L1 is stuck, hes got a senior, and if the senior gets stuck then they can hit chat, and be there for them. Hell the L1 can hit chat, because they know me, and I know them.
I've spend months out in Kolkata, Delhi, Hyderabad, with this stuff, and yeah, Ive seen it work. Satisfaction easily at 95%+ for incidents and requests, we just emailed after every ticket, are you happy?
Probably a bit random, and it's from just before Covid, and Ive gone back to smaller tech now, but it can work..
Fearless-Egg8712@reddit
Well, what companies are usually looking for is: access to specialized skills they can’t find locally, lower cost (aka less investment in IT), increased efficiency, geographic proximity, and exposure to diversity, more ideas, experience and innovation. It’s up to the company offering services to make sure they can meet these demands. Don’t do shared desk? Why? Back in the day my team was providing managed services for ERPs, for tens of companies across multiple countries. It was my job as a manager to make sure we can excel at what we were doing and reusing knowledge whenever possible – something a team serving 1 company simply cannot do. Standardize the process? Most companies already follow international standards, because they have to, just to stay compliant and to be even considered during RFPs. Why should I help the offshore company follow standards if they already promised they are capable of doing it before signing the agreement? The points you are discerning here is something for offshore managers to look at. Otherwise the only change you introduce is providing support, guidance, perks and benefits to someone who is located elsewhere instead of your own employees. So it’s essentially running your own IT with extra steps (plane tickets). Insane.
Significant_Oil3089@reddit
Are you an Indian national? I can't think of one American citizen who would willingly go and build this.
I would never offer my services to a company who expected me to travel to a country where I don't know the natural langauge, and to setup a viable working solution for IT SUPPORT.
This is not normal and absolutely not an expectation of American companies. In fact, if I was tasked with this, I would balk until I could find a different position that didn't ask me to do such things.
This alone would turn me away from working with this company, and would fortify my beliefs that this is bullshit.
Zocdoo@reddit
Comment to remember to edit and add more of my perspective, now I’m at gym so can’t elaborate
Significant_Oil3089@reddit
We are waiting to hear from you
Zocdoo@reddit
There it is
Happy_Kale888@reddit
kindly do the needful...
BuggyBagley@reddit
Goes for every culture, every other American:
Sounds good Sounds great I am all set Awesome! 🤮 How’s it goin Works for me No worries
Significant_Oil3089@reddit
Found the shitty Indian worker
BuggyBagley@reddit
Found the dumb one with low effort comeback. Shoo.
Significant_Oil3089@reddit
That's not called a comeback dummy.
Go wait for your mgrs approval or something.
BuggyBagley@reddit
Lol try harder, still low effort.
Significant_Oil3089@reddit
Lol ratioed mf
Get gud
BuggyBagley@reddit
Dude you are done, stop trying already. Just cope in silence.
bolunez@reddit
The one that gets me is "Hello, [your last name]" via chat followed by crickets.
Dog, I'm not answering until you give me a clue about what you want because it could be a 5 minute thing and it could also be that you want me put an order together for 500 new phones.
davidbrit2@reddit
I'm always tempted to reply back by sending them an email that just says "Hello."
Taikunman@reddit
Waving hand emoji 👋
Timzy@reddit
Normally it’s my first name spelt incorrectly, when it’s literally in the contact info
CeldonShooper@reddit
NoHello vibes
captkrahs@reddit
What does that mean
WhatVengeanceMeans@reddit
It's an idiom in Indian English that intends to convey the idea, "This is going on and I believe at least borders on your scope of work. If you have any insight you'd like to contribute, or if you can tell that we're about to break something, please let us know."
Speakers of American English though, lacking familiarity with the idiom, read it as, "You need to do something here. Please do the thing." without any specifics as to what the thing is. This is interpreted as extremely rude and counter-productive when actually it's the ideal scenario: Someone politely informing IT about upcoming changes and soliciting their input.
"The needful," to Indians, can be nothing, if you don't see any need for you in a situation. They're just checking, quite politely in fact.
timpkmn89@reddit
So "do anything that may be required" vs "do what's required"?
WhatVengeanceMeans@reddit
With the additional dynamic of offshore teams not always having the best visibility into the core company, so "what's required" may be pointing the thread at the guy who actually does the thing relevant to the conversation.
Won7ders@reddit
To me this doesn’t feel very rude either but I’m not American.
linawannabee@reddit
IT in the US is a very mono-cultural, white dominated profession. What you are witnessing is a mix of legitimate frustration with issues from offshoring support + culture shock without any incentive to bridge that gap. As a result, the temperature gets a little racist in these here woods at times
metalder420@reddit
It’s about how you ask it. “Do the needful” is just a rude way to say something when something more eloquent can be used. Indian English compared to modern British/American English has not evolved as much. Most of the phrases are from the time the British had control of the country.
IgglesJawn@reddit
Wow, I’m just learning this now. That explains a lot lol
anxiousinfotech@reddit
This was actually proper English when the British ~~colonized~~ invaded India. It fell out of use in other English speaking countries, but not in India.
VariousEar7@reddit
Everyone in the US simply needs to familiarize themselves with what was common English at the time of the colonization of India to accommodate these workers. It is simple
Separate_Paper_1412@reddit
No. We don't have time for that. They must learn American English
WhatVengeanceMeans@reddit
It is simple, but in the form of the LMGTFY crowd recognizing that a turn of phrase they keep coming across probably means something and maybe they should look into it instead of assuming an entire nation of people are just casually, hideously rude as a matter of course.
I mean, I really do try to keep the Lucky 10,000 attitude in general, but the combination of condescension at other folks' supposed lack of research skills with their own refusal to recognize language as a subject potentially worthy of research does sometimes manage to get under my skin.
WhatVengeanceMeans@reddit
Minor side-eye at referring to British English as "proper English" but yes. The concept of "needful" as a property of an object or concept as opposed to "need" as an active process within a person is largely archaic outside of Indian English, but they did originally get this from the Brits.
There's a joke in here somewhere about how we used to talk about Americans and the British as "two people divided by a common language" and it's somehow still true, but I don't have it. I'll have to keep brainstorming.
anxiousinfotech@reddit
Well, the British arrived in India in 1608, so at that time yes, it was proper English. It remained proper English until July 4th, 1776 when it became "old English."
WhatVengeanceMeans@reddit
Well, no... Old English is a specific thing.
Rock_man_bears_fan@reddit
Anything that happened before 1776 was a mistake
OneLapRace@reddit
matt95110@reddit
I got bored one day at work and I got an email from one of the other team members that started with, "do the needful" so I replied back and copied his manager and said that I don't appreciate the negative tone of his message. They had no idea how to respond to it and now they no longer email me. It is the best feeling ever.
therealmofbarbelo@reddit
What a Karen thing to do.
matt95110@reddit
Not really. I have heard many variations of “do the needful” from coworkers in my career and I have heard many versions of how to interpret it.
I personally find the phrase to be rude and passive aggressive. So I’m allowed to call someone out on it.
linawannabee@reddit
I was under the impression it's a cultural thing lost in translation. In the US, sounds condescending. In India, it's the equivalent of "Hi, I'm here to help". Chances are they had no idea what you didn't like about the tone
ilikeme1@reddit
So you didn’t “kindly do ____”?
flummox1234@reddit
but I have a question...
Significant_Oil3089@reddit
You mean
"But I have a doubt"
matt95110@reddit
I did not.
purpletees@reddit
Hmm, I like this.
woohhaa@reddit
That is such a fun little phrase. It’s a polite call to action that covers the desired activity and outcome in four little words. The first time I worked with an off shore team directly and saw that in an email I was blown away.
A guy I met at a conference said his IT team had coffee cups made that said “We kindly do the needful!”.
DekaoTheRAmar@reddit
I got pinged in slack with this exact phrase about a VDI issue and 3 months later I'm still trying to figure what the hell they meant.
Schaggy@reddit
And revert!
juicedfrank@reddit
This one should be much higher.
hurkwurk@reddit
Greetings of the day!
thateejitoverthere@reddit
Let me guess, that email came from a "dellteam.com" address?
hurkwurk@reddit
Microsoft.
SuperHarrierJet@reddit
We get this ALL the time. Always thought it was a joke til we onboarded 3 offshore companies.
blackbyrd84@reddit
And revert the same
SevTheNiceGuy@reddit
yeah man, it's the language barrier that is causing this.
kennyj2011@reddit
Not only that, in my experience, you get tier 1 support where they ignore all the troubleshooting you have done usually posted on their KB… and want to waste your time by having a WebEx to do the troubleshooting again. Just bump me to real support or engineering!
Zombie13a@reddit
They ignore all the troubleshooting you have already done and posted in the ticket, all the background info you put in the ticket, all the info about when and how to contact you about the issue, and all the info about the criticality of the system with the issue. Then they respond asking for all that information that you already provided. Then, when you re-provide all the info (because saying "I already did that, see above" doesn't work at all), they wait for 48 hours to respond to you because thats when the ticket pops up to the top of their queue again.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
Oracle heard you and will be tripling your next renewal. Also they only reply "what is the issue" at 1AM and then close your case since you did not reply to email at that time.
Zombie13a@reddit
Sadly, I wasn't even talking about Oracle. I thankfully don't deal with that kind of hell, just Broadcomm and Redhat.
Its to the point that I almost flatly refuse to put tickets in anymore. Generally, by the time I get a call back I've found the solution on Google and solved the problem anyway.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
I told my boss to not renew VMware support I get better and faster answers on Reddit (truly)
oloryn@reddit
Did he actually do it? One difference between the typical technical person and management is that technical people think of support in information-gathering terms: where can I get the information I need to fix X. Management, on the other hand, thinks in terms of responsibility - who's responsible if I need to fix X. Reddit isn't an organization that can be slotted into the 'responsible for X' slot, so management tends to resist acknowledgement that support can be 'obtained' from things like Reddit.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
Say you’ve never dealt with Broadcom without saying it. I’ve been an IT manager and a director and I let me team use any tools that helps them do their jon…..
Flyinace2000@reddit
Omg I've been out of Oracle consulting for about 6 years now (EBS R12 Procurement and Payables). I hated finding a S1 or S2 service request. "Why didn't you answer your phone?" It was 2:15am and I was asleep?
An-kun@reddit
Lol. Having been LM and team lead for both EU and US teams.. this just sounds like bad techs. In my case it was equally common in both. Just the US ones were usually paid 3 times more and often spoke better English, not always.
Zombie13a@reddit
Maybe it is just bad techs, but we are very diligent about researching before putting in tickets and since IBM bought Redhat, the support went down the crapper. It used to be that we could put a call in with everything we tried and the needed documentation and the ticket would be routed to 2nd level right away. Now, it looks more like the tech just wants to get "credit" for working the ticket today and doesn't actually read the full body before asking for what is already there.
spanky34@reddit
This is me dealing with Citrix support. I've given my TAM hell over the last 2 years for it. They know it sucks but won't do shit about it.
Impossible_IT@reddit
They "kindly" ignore all the troubleshooting you've already done and want you to "do the needful".
Charming-Log-9586@reddit
It's the accent. They are speaking English, every word.
MoreTHCplz@reddit
7/10 times a ticket that was escalated by our off shore team I am better off had they done nothing. We definitely have clients that are starting to refuse to work with "T1" which is just their code for offshore as this wasn't an issue until they came into the fold. We should make this an option for them. Funny part is our clients that pay for after hours support get no choice now as it's only the offshore working outside of business hours now.
Medic573@reddit
We did the same. It's a no brainer.
themastermatt@reddit
*Screams in HCL*
El_pika@reddit
Fuck I work with them, my company has a contract, I have spent so much time screaming a them to do something, and to use their fucking heads instead of reading a script.
madscoot@reddit
Lost my job about 6 weeks ago. Found out this week from a friend that two weeks after I left they replaced myself and another person they also got rid of with HCL staff for less money.
AlyssaAlyssum@reddit
Company signed a large contract with them a couple of years ago. Everything has only gotten worse.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
OMG I hate them. Remember when HP owned them they would day "I am calling from HP"
Vangoon79@reddit
Lol. yes.
MysteriousArugula4@reddit
Same here. It started post COVID and has been picking up steam. I have even had one company ask if the firm was U.S. only even though they don't have any official requirements. My boss has started promoting the concept officially now. As long as we don't get bought out, so far so good.
Remote-Negotiation-4@reddit
More companies should be doing this imho.
ycnz@reddit
A reminder that Indian and Chinese etc.. techs do utterly amazing technical work. What they don't do, is do it for the lowest-bidder shit the MBA asshat will pay at contract time.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
I agree, I’ve worked with some brilliant off shore German teams, how ever they also cost a pretty penny. However they almost cost as much as us devs. But keep American jobs in America
freakofnatur@reddit
Its almost like offshoring is biting companies in the ass.
AccommodatingSkylab@reddit
I would definitely pay the extra cost. From my experience with both vendor offshore teams and our two internal offshore contractors, they require constant supervision and lack self-direction. Tasks I can hand to my American L1s would completely stump the offshore L2's who have 5-8 years in the industry.
stromm@reddit
They just aren’t brought up to think outside of the box. It’s 100% cultural.
Or be self-conscious of actively avoiding answering a question that will put them in a bad light. They just don’t answer and think that it’s OK.
AccommodatingSkylab@reddit
Yeah that tracks. We've restricted the clients they have access to because they will ingest an alert and then blow up an on-calls phone to ask what to do with it if the document doesn't give them a step by step for every scenario.
IForgotThePassIUsed@reddit
who would have thought paying someone 50 cents an hour will get you that actual worth in support.
I wouldn't go offshore if I expected to ever hold onto my clients.
NimbleNavigator19@reddit
We offshore to multiple countries in europe and asia, including the stereotypical one, but we make sure they actually know their shit. We also have a few clients who get pissy when one of the offshore guys handles their ticket but I shut that down immediately. As long as the work is getting done how and when it should there isn't an issue. "But he talks funny" will never be an acceptable reason to complain.
oloryn@reddit
But "He talks unintelligibly" should be an acceptable reason.
NimbleNavigator19@reddit
We provide english classes for all employees that aren't fluent.
dbxp@reddit
Depends where you off shore to. Eastern Europe has some great engineering talent and the Philippines is popular with call centres as there's lots of native English speakers
AnonEMoussie@reddit
My favorite call center to deal with was in Edinburgh. They called me with an outage alert on a Friday night, and I wasn’t even mad.
xxdcmast@reddit
I used to “love” the few times I had to call VMware support and got their Ireland call center. Sooooo much better than pls do needful center both in understandability and skill.
tacotacotacorock@reddit
I don't know why everyone's talking about offshore like it's a bad thing. It can be but not always.
My clients would be livid if I did not have international support for their regions. To support global operations these days you have to have employees in different countries regions time zones etc to provide consistent support. A lot of clients went straight up leave us for the competition if we got rid of our international employees.
hankhillnsfw@reddit
Wow what a crazy thought you could have an overnight shift?
I have yet to see a successful implementation of off shore. And when I say successful I don’t mean corporate numbers successful I mean overall better or same quality. Jfc dude.
rotoddlescorr@reddit
We're an international company so there is no such thing as "offshore" to us. Maybe "offplanet."
silence036@reddit
If you think I'm getting positive cents an hour worth of value out of this kind of support, you are sorely mistaken!
hankhillnsfw@reddit
I can’t blame them.
We spun up an office in India. It was a complete disaster. They laid off service desk in US, India service desk completely failed, now they are rebuilding us service desk and laid off India service desk.
Man. I work for a shitty company.
ycnz@reddit
Shitty economic system.
SpaceCptWinters@reddit
Based on your description, we could work for the same company.
Time_Fruit@reddit
Yes, fuck offshore! Keep everything local and work with our fellow citizens.
zeduki@reddit
As someone with auditory processing issues I can completely understand
RobinatorWpg@reddit
The quickest way for me to not do business with you is if you pay people 5 cents on the dollar in any place. And that’s all it is, your buying labour there because you don’t want to pay rates for skilled labour where you are
tankerkiller125real@reddit
If it were Microsoft at $200/month for real support I'd sign the dotted line without a second thought. Fuck I'd sign the dotted line without second thought if it were an extra $400/month.
st8ofeuphoriia@reddit
As someone who payed for unified support…don’t do it. You still get the offshore team that swear they’re in the middle of Ohio or somewhere in Seattle.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
Lol, I know for a fact they wouldn't be in Ohio, I live in Ohio, and the only Microsoft postings in this state are for remote positions that report directly to HQ. Although I would love if they built a data center here like AWS and GCP have.
ObeseBMI33@reddit
$401/month?
FigurativeLynx@reddit
No
trixster87@reddit
$404 support not found.
____Reme__Lebeau@reddit
10% of your annual Microsoft spending? Unified support contract.
eshuaye@reddit
My previous customers was telling me it was for a few companies $200 per Microsoft support ticket.
No_Carob5@reddit
It's per user.
So $400K for a small / med business...
ObiLAN-@reddit
Sir can you try running a SFC /Scannow ?
sryan2k1@reddit
OP's company is per user per month.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
So converted to Microsoft, call it an extra $20-30 a month per user license. Hell, that $30 per user would be WAY better spent on real support than Co-Pilot.
Popsicleese@reddit
I thought Microsoft was a license and storage service company... I guess I do learn something new everyday!
longlurcker@reddit
Please suggest.
gl1ttercake@reddit
I have a doubt, can you please suggest me?
mailboy79@reddit
This gives me a chance to (re)tell the story of my experiences with those from the Great Subcontinent.
The year is 2008. I was working in a 4-person group of MS Exchange administrators. Our employer (a three-letter entity with a blue logo) informed me and my workmate (an elderly greybeard fellow that taught me all there was to know about Exchange at this work site) that we were "too expensive to employ" and that our new work duties were to "train" our eventual replacements, who we later learned were two individuals from the Great Subcontinent. We were to be given a severance check as a final payment as reward for this endeavor which was several weeks of pay at once.
We were given an Excel workbook with an extensive list of duties to teach these two individuals. Upon reviewing the document, to be known from here on as GB, said to me: "Hey $mailboy79, this list is pretty extensive, how are we going to teach them our Exchange practices in four weeks?"
I calmly told him:
GB, we can teach them all we want, but that doesn't guarantee that they are going to actually learn anything, does it? So just check the boxes off of this form as you go along, and make sure that you sign it, so that on quitting day, you get paid. Understand?
GB: That's brilliant, $mailboy79! I never would have figured it out in quite that way.
GB got to teach them some Exchange-related practices, but his particular trainee never really asked the type of questions that a "Windows Server Administrator" might ask if he was in a new environment.
I was tasked to teach my trainee how to build "Conference Rooms" (essentially shared mailboxes with an auto-attendant that staff used to schedule meetings with shared space) and to ensure that they knew the "best practices" for handling disaster recovery procedures in the organization. for the DR stuff, they had to attend and observe a series of four meetings with stakeholders present.
The first DR meeting comes... and goes... they fail to attend. I call one of them up on the telephone to find out "what happened":
$mailboy79: so $bozo1, why did you miss the DR meeting? I had about a dozen people lined up and waiting to meet you.
$bozo1: I was busy with $bozo2 doing "important stuff" (NGL)
$mailboy79: "It is vitally important that you attend these meetings. If you come in to them unprepared, you are going to be facing many unhappy people."
$bozo1: I'm so sorry...
To cut a long story short, both $bozo1 and $bozo2 missed the next three meeting instances. I called $bozo1 on the telephone after the final DR meeting had concluded:
$mailboy79: "$bozo1, I need to know why you have not attended any of these important DR meetings! You have missed your final opportunity to meet with the stakeholders before I am gone from this place forever."
$bozo1: "Well, $bozo2 and me were hoping that you could set up a special meeting to meet these people privately."
$mailboy79: That's not going to happen. These are not IT staff. The have actual work to do for their employer and don't have the time for special meetings for you two."
$bozo1: "Oh, I guess we should have attended those meetings then."
$mailboy79: "Yup. goodbye."
Beyond this, I was specifically tasked with training $bozo1 on how to create the Conference Rooms mentioned previously. He failed to appear for several scheduled training opportunities, so I set about making full-scale documentation complete with pictograms, procedures, diagrams, and the like.
At 3:20 PM on my last scheduled working day, $bozo1 calls my telephone:
$bozo1: "I had a question..." $mailboy79: "What's the question, $bozo1?" $bozo1: "How do you build a Conference Room?" $mailboy79: "I'd strongly advise you to consult the documentation i wrote on that topic. If you don't know what to do after reading it, contact our manager. If you don't know what to do after that, call our supervisor, and if you don't know what to do after that, call the director. If you do not know what to do after making this series of telephone calls, I don't know what to tell you because it is 3:30 on a Friday, and my work day is over. Goodbye."
I met up with GB and asked him how it went with $bozo2. He indicated that the poor slob was clueless.
When I turned in my company property to get my check from our line manager, it was the closest that I had seen any man cry outside of my immediate family. He didn't know what to do now that we were leaving.
We later learned that $bozo1 and $bozo2 spent their time in the company cafeteria babbling in Hindi to others from the Great Subcontinent. They were "fired" shortly after I left, and the worksite was run into the ground to the cost of multimillions of dollars.
True story.
Hacky_5ack@reddit
I say this every time, a company will learn really fast if they off shore IT. I don't care if it's helpdesk, desktop, or Infra., they'll learn.
SpaceCptWinters@reddit
How do you feel about a US based company taking over a help desk that was previously staffed with credentialed L1s/L2s/L3s,, staffing it instead with 13$/hr new hire employees who have zero credentials, giving some guy (me, a NOC guy who stares at Netcool) an 8 hour knowledge transfer from the original help desk, so that the new employees can be 'trained' (again by a NOC guy who has no real clue what's going on)? These folks are going to be DC admins ...
Hacky_5ack@reddit
Absolutely horrible decision and again, they will eventually learn. They may like the savings on money bit the support will be shit. Some companies only want the $$$ so who knows how they'll take the off shore support. Most typically will start to bring back in house after a few years or so.
degoba@reddit
Wait. You guys charge US clients for support and then just outsource it?
notHooptieJ@reddit
welcome to Half of MSPs
one fast talking technical guy, outsourcing everything to offshored support.
how else do you think they can give 365 at cost and less than 10s of dollars per endpoint?
they only exist on paper and for compliance.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Depends on their support agreement. But we have US only agreements, not everyone wants to spend money on IT,
MickCollins@reddit
Man I wish my boss would do this. I have a big problem with accents and it's hard for me to hear as well so when I'm on calls with overseas people it's more than a little difficult.
ANotDavid@reddit
No Indian "support" for 200$ a month? Geez count me in.
The offshore support is terrible I'd rather have a shitty ai chat bot answer my stuff.
Legitimate_Put_1653@reddit
Depending on the client’s line of work, there may be some new legal requirements that dictate these terms. I’ve found that some state governments are enforcing this as are entities that work with PHI and financial data. They want to close off as many avenues as possible for their data to leave US shores.
Marty_McFlay@reddit
We're dropping a vendor who just moved their L1 and L2 support from GA to Poland. Sorry but for what we pay a month I want US support. L3 was already in China and that was just useless, we'll go back to paying Larry Ellison's insane prices to not have to deal with this vendor anymore.
DrMylk@reddit
They might have a contract which does not allow the data to be touched from outside the country.
Doctorphate@reddit
That’s actually a fantastic sales pitch thank you. I’m going to offer a “no offshore” package for double and I’ll only have to remove one person from our queue lol
arbyyyyh@reddit
A particular vendor that I work with has like, one single support person who’s born and raised in the US. The rest of dev and support are either from India or in India. When I get the one person from the US, I cringe because he’s an idiot who literally makes shit up while our system (medical related) is down and weee trying to fix it. When I get one of the folks from India, I’m relieved because they’re actually gonna know how to fix it.
woohhaa@reddit
I worked for a large medical device manufacturer who started out sourcing a lot of the IT operations stuff to a large MSP based out of India. Somehow the contract was structured around certain metrics including ticket counts, VM counts, and storage volume. Ie $.05 x VM count at the end of the quarter, $.01 x ticket count at the end of the quarter, $.08 x TB of SAN/NAS storage at the end of the quarter, etc.
Those bastards would open a ticket for every little thing then half the time close them to meet the KPIs before actually doing the work correctly then requesting the user put in another ticket. It wasn’t uncommon to have a user reach out over teams asking for help circumventing the help desk because they’d place 3-4 tickets already with no resolution though they kept getting closed.
Surprise surprise the off shore teams wanted their own persistent VMs for each individual employee and yes each one needed hundreds of GB of storage, and they needed test, dev, uat, and prod for EVERYTHING!
It turned into a cat and mouse game of automation, storage saving technologies, decom processes and huge hurdles to creating new VMs with absurd oversight and approval processes.
Once I needed 75 VMs for a large development project for an ERP migration. I had to fill out 25 VM request tickets with an attached excel spreadsheet noting the specs, owner, role, etc for each server. I scripted the creation of the other 50 desktop dev VMs with one ticket (I had the dept directors blessing in an email) and you’d have thought I robbed a bank. Those MSP account managers had a freaking fit when they got word I robbed them of all those tickets and made such lean dev VMs.
As an infrastructure engineer I just enjoyed sitting back and watching the chaos but boy were they inefficient. Who ever signed off on that contract is probably a C level at this point unfortunately. Some people fail upwards in a spectacular manner.
pentangleit@reddit
It's annoying - I own a British MSP and we'd love to outsource for you guys. The language barrier here is only because we all sound like Bond villains to you guys, but i'd love to even quote $200 a user. We're about a quarter of the price.
Bright_Arm8782@reddit
$200 per user and my space laser doesn't melt your building, I call that a very fair price.
NuAngel@reddit
Wait, I'm a bit confused. $200 per user per month!??? How much time do these people spend on the phone with tech support?
Is this just to have the OPTION to call tech support? Like I'm getting billed an extra $200 per employee per month, on top of whatever my normal agreement is, on the off-chance that they might call tech support? And I'm supposed to do this for my whole company? I'm missing something...
I worked at a VAR / MSP and these numbers seem crazy high to me. But we did lump-sum hours -- so our customers could pre-pay for like 5-40 hour "blocks" of time, and we would chip away at their time based on a contract value. I don't know if there was a 'retainer fee' or anything, but this seems like more than any of our clients would have paid. lol
ass-holes@reddit
We have four in house first liners. They all make different wages as they work from different countries but let's say they make, on average, 3500 gross per month. That's 14 000 in wages and then you have the tax the company pays the government. In my country that's another 50 % on top so let's say in house support costs the company 21000 euros per month.
Hmm, I wanted to address that this is pretty normal but it does seem really expensive. We are a company of about 1000 so that would mean it would cost 21 euro per user per month. Sure, you're not actively helping each and every user every month but then again. Goddamn.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Yes correct, it’s your standard costs plus $200 extra per user per month. They are unlimited service contracts. This is basically everything excluding project work.
tacotacotacorock@reddit
Either you're sorely mistaken about the accounting at your company and they're going to profit from it overall. Or they're going to go out of business. I'm guessing the former unless you work for some janky employer.
9jmp@reddit
Think about how much they lose wasting time with your worthless offshore support.. I've seen this quite a few times.. you will lose clients for it before going back to all in house, not before you lose your best clients though.
HealthySurgeon@reddit
This is normal. The way you worked is also normal. I usually see both options at the same company. The hour blocks are generally for projects and "one off" things where you can predict and then there's a support contract which only makes their support "available".
I've personally never been provided an option to get rid of off shore support in favor of a little extra money, but it 100% makes sense. Support is working whether you have an issue or not, and they need to get paid. If you don't pay it, someone else will. It's the same exact reason why you have to pay a fee every month just to have support "available".
Usually the per user/employee thing is slightly dependent on "who" is receiving the support. I once worked where normal users were receiving support from the MSP and we did have to pay a per user fee for that, but in cases where it's only IT people calling in for "extra support", it's only a charge for each of those IT people who are calling in generally. You're usually paying a higher price here though with a higher quality of support.
It's usually more worth it to have a small helpdesk team for support that handles the bulk majority of calls and then escalate to an MSP when issues arise. So I think you're properly surprised at the potential cost of each user receiving support, but usually people don't just buy in, they'll shift their stuff around, or just buy it right away and work towards removing the MSP partially or completely.
NuAngel@reddit
I can't get my boss to spend $50 per user per month on email and phones (self-hosted or bust!), and people are paying hundreds for the option of calling tech support? I'm in the wrong industry.
I'm just genuinely shocked, and clearly being the guy on the other end of the phone didn't put me very far ahead!
Mammoth_Loan_984@reddit
There is a LOT of money in tech if you know how to sniff it out. My previous company was a tech vendor in cybersecurity & automation, I commonly saw contracts of $100,000 - $500,000 for 3 year product + support bundles. In more performant markets, take that into the low millions.
HealthySurgeon@reddit
I mean, it’s genuinely not too terribly difficult to start an MSP up if you’re at all familiar with starting a small business.
Just need to find the clients.
WhiskyTequilaFinance@reddit
Depends on the number of users, and the type of support. For some of our critical systems that can cost millions a day if they're down? Yeah, we'll pony up extra so we don't have to write step by step instructions to walk someone how to Google for the solution to the problem, then get on a call with them, read them the script from Google, and then guide them click by click through doing everything.
Tulpen20@reddit
I've had experiences like this as well. Not just with technical issues but also with sales/offers/estimates. The local team (sales) takes down the info but then is required by corporate HQ (Japan) to send it to corporate sales (India) to have the quote generated. Two weeks per round and always something wrong. It got so bad that I submitted a kitlist with all of the mfg part numbers and options, in both excel and other formats that they could directly import... two weeks later, an incorrect quote received.
Don't even get me started on the tech support calls.
Right, right, right, I hear you, but what you must now be doing....
And on the other side, I have met some brilliant people in and from other countries who really do know their shit. Getting to them, being able to email/talk to them is often the issue as they get deluged with all the escalations. I had on one tech-support call that had been running for several hours suddenly one of these peeps pop in to the call, ask a question or two in high-speed English and give back what the source of the issue was, what to do about it and that, yes, it was not documented well. He was in the call for less than two minutes. I wish I had recorded that call.
As to the paper-certified people with no experience - my experience is that this is not confined to any one culture or people.
In the end, my preference would be not for any specific country but to not have to deal with the call-center/servicedesk warm-bodied script readers. Perhaps 'they' could create a certification for 'us' where we could prove that we know our shit and can bypass first-line script-reading support. Let the exam-mills roll! /sarcasm
southceltic@reddit
Since Microsoft and Dell moved Level 1 support to offshore countries, the service has deteriorated so much that they’ve achieved their primary goal: discouraging customers from calling. This is my experience. When I used to buy basic support packages, I would kick myself for it. However, with Microsoft MS365, it’s different: there, I have no choice, and it’s Microsoft that’s behaving poorly.
zambezisa@reddit
Had many clients ask for this and queried into where our support is based, and many had regulatory and security requirements.
Miyuki22@reddit
Those outsourced offshore it staff are definitely not working 4 jobs at once and you definitely dont need to remind them every 30 minutes to do their job.
Definitely. :P
LuckyMan85@reddit
As someone who regularly has to talk to various offshore (from a U.K. standpoint) support teams it really varies in quality, but, that is no different to an on shore team. What is different is being able to efficiently communicate and get a handle quickly on whether this is really the person you need to talk to to resolve whatever it is. In my direct team we barely have anyone who’s mother tongue is English but as they all speak really good English it doesn’t get in the way. My unsexy opinion is if you outsource to the cheapest bidder it doesn’t matter where they’re based, they’re probably not going to be very good as they’re not employing suitably qualified staff.
Anonymo123@reddit
Please do the needful. Lol
Our company also has clients pull back from outsourced support to only US based.
BrilliantEffective21@reddit
i wouldn't either
someone needed a reset on the AD profile for their VDI layer 2
but the fucken outsource kept trying to reset pw for layer 1 local account for non-cloud compute
they kept resetting level 1 pw over and over
eventually, after several phone calls, we got a tech that reset VDI layer 2 pw configuration and service was restored
whytefir3@reddit
lmao as they should
Frothyleet@reddit
I'm curious what the extra $200 is, proportionally. Like, is it $50+200? $200+$200?
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
More like 186-221k a year + $200 per user who doesn’t want to deal with none us based support. So for example you can have 110 users but if 15 users only want US based support that ran you an extra 36k for your yearly contract
Frothyleet@reddit
Ahaha, I see. Let me guess, the requests are for members of senior management?
Mammoth_Loan_984@reddit
Senior management aren’t technical, they shouldn’t be raising technical requests. More likely it’s for senior engineers or sysadmins.
KarlDag@reddit
What? Your senior management never have Outlook or SharePoint issues? Never click phishing links? Never try to recover files they deleted?
Mammoth_Loan_984@reddit
I guess my assumption was that this was for actual vendor or systems-based technical support, e.g server/service issues. I didn’t think that maybe he’s just talking about helpdesk.
LForbesIam@reddit
I agree. Why would you want your identity and PII stolen and sold? Foreign countries don’t follow laws not in their own country. No US company has any jurisdiction over foreign employees following the US laws.
bindermichi@reddit
I absolutely can relate to that, but the quality of the level1 callcenter doesn’t depend on the location.
I‘ve always selected the callcenters on their resolve rate and customer satisfaction KPI. And we usually had them spread across the globe. And since the biggest issues where language barriers, we rarely picked the ones in India.
monistaa@reddit
Is Canada counting, lol?
JustInflation1@reddit
Maybe people will start actually hiring.
Icolan@reddit
Some companies do not have a choice. Companies with DoD or DoE contracts for example.
aj0413@reddit
lol just got done explaining to my boss today how his offshore senior devs are definitely not senior
Significant_Oil3089@reddit
My last week at AWS I'm going to very clearly and deliberately call these idiots out.
None of these offshore workers know how to think independently or figure anything out. If there aren't explicit instructions, they are lost.
I can't wait to tell them how much of a drain they are on the IT world. I can't wait to explain to them that Google fucking exists and they should use it to the fullest extent of their ability to type words.
I'm over helping shitty offshore people use technology that they should know how to use if they are calling me for support. Fuck offshore, fuck India teams, and fuck anyone who advocates for their use in an American company.
illicITparameters@reddit
We have offshore resources, and no one is happy. Fuck private equity.
badaz06@reddit
200 per user or per admin/person adking questions?
usmcjohn@reddit
We are on our 3 offshore company, and as many CIOs in 9 years. New CIO, new Offshore L1 support. Same problems, different bill.
My_Big_Black_Hawk@reddit
I’ve worked with companies who almost exclusively hire offshore workers. Overpromise and underdeliver is their mission statement. I couldn’t imagine our customers reaching offshore support for tier 1 issues. They would bumble around, pass tickets around, and leave everyone with empty promises. It’s seriously BAD bad. It’s very rare that I come across anyone from offshore support who can hold a candle to someone local.
EchoChamberReddit13@reddit
Offshore support is cheap…. And utterly worthless.
Spagman_Aus@reddit
$200 EXTRA and PER USER? May as well bring it in-house and just do it properly. Better response times, no language barrier, REAL accountability, better metrics & reporting, and a better user experience overall.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Still really doesn’t make sense in the sub 100 and even 200 range.
Unless you want to have 2/3 jack of all trades masters of none, but that will run you 150-300k in salary costs alone. ( total compensation including payroll taxes)
BigBobFro@reddit
But how will the CxO justify his 7-figure bonus
Spagman_Aus@reddit
When does anyone have to justify a bonus? 😅
FenixSoars@reddit
You’re an idiot if you think offshoring support is a good user experience
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
I work systems, of course I don’t want anything off shored. But if a company wants to cheap out and try to get IT support for sun $50 a user a month then they arnt even getting a US based POC.
Again I just stick to my ticket queue
Some company’s are fine with spending 5-6k for full scope IT support excluding project work per person per year. Other want to spend less then $500 for person
I hate how I can’t even talk to a real person at most places anymore. If it was up to me I would make America focus on 18th foreign policy of american isolationism
AppIdentityGuy@reddit
The people who go with off shore support or the vendors who outsource it offshore don't really care about user experience
FenixSoars@reddit
Yeah they care about their bottom line and that’s about when I stop caring about their bottom line.
SalesAficionado@reddit
lmao , good for them
changework@reddit
Ways your off shore location?
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
The Philippines
cosmos7@reddit
Sounds like an absolute bargain. The money spent dealing with the "support's" incomplete understanding of the subject as well as communication issues will far exceed that small monthly cost.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Sure but someone having to spend an extra 70k on a service contract will see it differently.
Kahless_2K@reddit
Not all offshore groups are created equal. Some of the best support Ive ever worked with was India based. Unfortunately, that's the exception. My point is some companies will surprise you, don't judge one company just by the country it's in.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
At my previous companies i worked with a dev team that was brilliant and India based they were also getting us based comp and some allegedly made more then our us based devs.
tacotacotacorock@reddit
Are you positive it's not a business requirement? Some industries are very particular who they can and can't hire especially international employees. Typically these are DOD contracts and the like.
I worked for a company and we had numerous clients/contracts with those requirements.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Positive, they purchased and upgraded service contract
lost_signal@reddit
I think you meant to post to r/msp
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
System admins can work at msp’s
wild-hectare@reddit
the fact that the customer jumped at the opportunity to pay more, means your prices are still too low
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Then we have clients complaining we are to expensive, not everyone is signing up
nighthawke75@reddit
This is the norm now. They can and WILL pay the extra for the grey matter between the ears, an accent they can understand, plus to be compliant with any Federal or international laws concerning sensitive material.
Get used to it and on-board more domestic call centers that are certified for high level secrecy.
SiIverwolf@reddit
Because while off-shore support CAN be great, they're frequently not.
Even when they are perfectly good techs, there can be frustrations born from language barriers (even just issues understanding accents), culturally born communication issues (responses can feel wooden and formulaic, so harder to build rapport), and sometimes the desire to support local workers instead of having their jobs shipped off-shore. There can also be legislative and compliance based reasons, like not allowing foreign access to company data. And of course, even if none of the above applies, sometimes there's an element of racism.
Off-shore support is a great way for a company to maximise their profits by hiring 10 support staff for the same cost as one local alternative, but for some clients, the existence of off-shore team members is an absolute hard no.
Creegz@reddit
I have worked with some excellent offshore resources in the past and currently have a couple of very good ones. The environment that’s being supported has a part in this, such as some can’t have offshore eyes on their stuff, but in an MSP environment or something similar it shouldn’t be a problem.
I’ve had issues with customers refusing to work with local resources who are either of a specific nationality or even gender more than a lot of my offshore resources. We had an Indian woman who albeit wasn’t very skilled, she was capable, and a customer got very heated at me insisting she was offshore. I was sitting 3 feet away from her and was helping her with an obscure problem he was having. He called me a liar and used some choice words so we fired that customer.
Mostly how we have handled those people is they can’t cherry pick resources and demand immediate response from it. They get slotted in where available, but a lot of our more frequently requested resources also happen to be senior/experienced ones so their time is more valuable and sparse.
While the customer may not like this it’s important for them to understand they don’t need a sysadmin to reset a desktop password or install a piece of generic software. If they’re still too stubborn to accept the help that’s offered then they can wait.
I had one person demanding I help them. They refused all other help but I was on vacation. When they discovered I would not be back for over two weeks they reached out to me directly multiple times and ignored my automatic reply and voicemail greeting. They strong armed my cell phone from someone (another issue entirely that I handled) which was turned off. Many angry messages and voicemails were left for my return. Their problem was solved by windows restarting their pc after an update.
wine_and_dying@reddit
For our issue, with our support partner, it’s the endless transfers to other teams and constantly reintroducing new people to the same problem over and over. I fully believe it is a strategic decision to weed out less persistent people. I really truly hate the words “did we put a ticket in?” I know l will spend at least 4-5 hours at a min on it. Mindless. They’re 0/16 so far for things I’ve brought to them.
cfreukes@reddit
I had a Pakistani co-worker explain this to me 20 years ago when off-shore support started becoming the norm. In many middle easter cultures it's considered taboo to admit fault. Either your fault of the fault of your employer. This makes them pretty pretty bad at customer support...
abz_eng@reddit
And an inability to ask for help I have been tasked with doing X so if I can't I have failed even when the customer is actually asking for Y!
caribbeanjon@reddit
I've worked with good and bad support from all over the globe. IMO it's not about location, it's about building an effective support staff (and paying them adequately to stay!) My current employer pays new college graduates in Vietnam $700/mo. At that rate, the company across the street offers you $800/mo and you are gone. You can't build a quality effective team overnight and once you do build it you better hold onto it.
Particular_Archer499@reddit
One weird thing I see mostly with India folks is when you contact them for more information for their ticket, give you exactly what was already in the ticket.
Always confuses me. Yes, I saw that because I was already in your ticket. I was very specific that I needed additional info, not the same info I already checked.
Wiecks@reddit
That honestly depends. Off shore teams based in Europe are usually a lot closer in quality to US ones (or sometimes even better) while the most issues comes from - at the risk of being slightly racist - the legendary "yes of course" Rashids from India.
They're working hard to get all the jobs while severely underpaying and underdelivering which creates really unhealthy market
Aless-dc@reddit
Most of our client base refuse to engage with our visa workers who are working from our main office.
breakingd4d@reddit
I wish my company would do that, azure’s off shore support using mind tree has been a nightmare
Dizzybro@reddit
Id pay $200 a head too so I could talk to someone competent
UptimeNull@reddit
This a beautiful thing !! :) it’s cyclical. It always happens. Job security is incoming for you good sir.
eat-the-cookiez@reddit
Had the same thing happen at an MSP - the customers ended up leaving when support was offshored. a few changed their minds during the last 2 years due to offshore being cheaper.
digitaltransmutation@reddit
Keep in mind that "off shore teams" includes natural born USA citizens with accents or non-christian names. Hernandez who was born in arizona and has english as his only language? he'll be a top 5% complaint magnet.
marquessmint@reddit
I’ve worked with some super great guys from India, but the language barrier really can be a problem for them when they talk to clients. I’ll be honest and say “hey xyz sounds rude to a native speaker” and try to help, but an end user will just get upset.
cattlekidvi@reddit
I am point of contact for our MSP. We also have some great folks on our team. I’m not so worried about language barrier, we haven’t gotten any complaints in the almost two years of our contract so far.
What I am in constant fear of is someone making a change in production with unintended consequences. We’ve locked our guys out of that capability. It’s overkill since there are some changes that they should be making (redirect output queue to a new printer for example) but unfortunately it’s an all or nothing situation. We still get the occasional middle of the night call for a printer redirect but they are few and far between.
melshaw04@reddit
You guys have support?
mrlinkwii@reddit
this is very common , depending on the industry their is may be a regulatory reason for this
Turdulator@reddit
Only 200 Hundo? Thats a no brainer
UCFknight2016@reddit
Worth it. Having to deal with indian support cost a company I worked for a lot of clients. You get what you pay for.
batchian320@reddit
I love all the discourse around this. i’m “offshore” for a british company working from america. we are “outsourced” technically to other companies & they all just love it & my accent lol.
SilverCamaroZ28@reddit
Sign me up for US support. No offense but it's getting ridiculous how they offshore everything for so cheap, it shows in the support.
william_70@reddit
We work with clients that are based in the United States but have many people who English is not their primary language. Imagine if they tried to offshore them to another non native English speaker for support. That and other regulatory reasons.
Titanium125@reddit
I have 2 off shore people on my team at my small MSP. They are both perfectly nice people, but yeah they aren't very good. They have a habit of pushing changes to production without testing, accessing people's computer without asking, etc. I have heard numerous complaints about them from clients. Some of them specifically request not to work with them, or will hang up if they answer and call back.
Charming-Log-9586@reddit
100% TRUE. I've working on picking out a new ERP system for my company and like Epicor's Prophet 21 software, but they out source to a team in Indian. That was an immediate turn off for me so I found a business in New Jersey that has USA support only. Their system wasn't as robust, but the pain and anguish of not having to deal with off shore support what sold me. Today, I was listening to a software demonstration by two Indian people and I find myself spending more energy understanding their English, rather than what they are saying.
monkeywelder@reddit
I did work for DOD and if we called support for say Symantec we were instructed to get a US rep if any off shore answered. The was and still is opportunity to start an onshore 3rd party support group for hundreds of products
F7xWr@reddit
What? With some kind of phone citizenship test or something? Are you guys trained lignuists and detect accents or something?
monkeywelder@reddit
yes, and we asked. We are not animals,
Orioruz@reddit
Many clients are willing to pay a premium to avoid offshore support, despite the potential cost savings.
libertyprivate@reddit
< way higher
< $200/month
These don't make sense together.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
That’s $200 on top of the existing support price
libertyprivate@reddit
So what's the existing support price?
Is this 200 more per user?
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Depends there’s people paying 140k for sub 30 users and others paying 80k for 70 users. ( but you want a computer upgrade it’ll be $200)
You’ll see what level of service you get, for example there some clients were if something is broken and they’re domain controller. We don’t fix it even their side now because it’s not included in their support agreement. So we have to bill them for separate errors. I’ll use a perfect example. Domain controller stop singing to azure, besides rebooting the server. The agreement didn’t stipulate anymore troubleshooting even though I knew what the issue was I had to get separate approval then bill them at $250 for fixing the issue. With a 45 minute minimum.
Other clients only pay to manage one server, and then the rest of everything gets billed.
r33k3r@reddit
$200 per user per month is more than a lot of companies allocate for their entire software and support budget.
spoonplaysgames@reddit
i’d convince my company to spend 100k a year on non outsourced support for any critical service. i dont blame your clients at all.
PoutPill69@reddit
I'd gladly spend extra to not deal with offshore teams. I've found they generally suck, have a significant language barrier, and the time difference is awful.
FlounderOk200@reddit
One of my buddy's in the 2010 time frame was working at a Pharmaceutical company and a section of their infrastructure was off shored to India. My buddy was on a Conference bridge trying to get the Indian Engineering Team on the call to deal with an Internet Outage. Only to be told that the Indian Boss and the next three guys on the call sheet were out to lunch. For three hours!!! By the time they got back the American CTO and his Boss where on the Bridge call asking why they ignored there phone calls. My buddy told me Heads on the Indian Team rolled a few weeks later because of that incident,
Stygian_rain@reddit
This should surprise literally no one
captkrahs@reddit
I can’t blame them
FlounderOk200@reddit
I have worked at a MSP that only hires US based employees as our customers have had "issues" with other MSP's that worked with offshore teams and people. They pay they extra knowing they can communicate with the people they are seeking help from.
Quindo@reddit
If I had a dollar for the number of times I got onto a conference call with a clients IT support team and it was an offshore person with a crappy mic and a near unintelligible thick accent I would be rich. It makes sense why some companies are wanting to pay premium to have easier to understand support.
dlongwing@reddit
I feel for Indian tech support. Seriously. Bad pay, everyone you talk to hates you, and you're often hamstrung to only do what your limited script says you can do.
But as a customer? I'd like my support to come from someone who knows what they're talking about and (this bit's key) will escalate if they don't.
Indian call centers make their numbers on cases they don't escalate, and that's the whole problem. If you don't know the answer, put me through to someone who does.
kwt90@reddit
I wish more companies had these options we would gladly pay. We started opening tickets at certain times to avoid getting certain regions. The main problem is the lack of training in highly technical issues and the inability to communicate or escalate when they get stuck. Also they don't read, I had to pull some white paper off the vendors website and tell them how off track they are to convince them to escalate the problem and more than one occasion getting their manager involved to escalate or change region.
EffectiveMindless240@reddit
With all the time I have wasted with offshore support for Microsoft tickets, I would pay that in a heartbeat. Well, I wouldn't. I would strongly recommend to our CFO that we pay this, haha.
Jmc_da_boss@reddit
I love the Microsoft "follow the sun" support model where during azure night outages there's an Australian situation manager who is non technical but speaks English well and a bunch of silent Indian engineers just sitting there while they "wait for the American engineers to wake up"
It's a very fun experience
Jmc_da_boss@reddit
I don't blame them lol it's a total pain in the ass, i also refuse to work with our offshore contractors. I will not enable bad decision making.
Zncon@reddit
Because offshore support is by and large entirely useless, and has only become more so with the advent of AI tools.
Every time I've tried to get help for first line offshore support, my time would have been better used just solving the issue myself, because that's always what happens anyway.
NoyzMaker@reddit
Are they a federal contractor? Because that is not an uncommon ask or requirement. I am only allowed to have US Citizens in my particular environment.
GuyWithTheNarwhal@reddit
I honestly believe all of this offshoring should be illegal. I have no doubt they were willing to pay the money to actually have competent service.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
My MSP charges $280 per hour and offshores. I'd like to spend around the industry standard $165 blended rate and have on shore.....
HealthySurgeon@reddit
Do the math, do any of your team members spend more than a couple hours trying to communicate and work with offshore teams alone? Not even considering any of the actual work time, but just communicating.
From my experience, I'm almost positive all your team members spend at LEAST a couple hours of wasted time every month trying to just communicate.
I've also spent a lot of time working with various individuals across the entire world. The US contains the highest quality engineers hands down with no questions asked. There's only a couple countries in the EU that MIGHT be able to offer similar service, but you're going to run into time issues more often than not, being an issue. The engineers working the night shift, generally aren't your highest quality engineers and they more often than not lean heavily on the day shift engineers to get anything actually done.
$200 a month per user, sounds cheap af to get rid of off shore queues. You're probably going to save money simply by upgrading the contract and speeding up your communication, even though it's not a direct cost savings.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
I got escalated a ticket for an intune compliance issue 2 hours of wasted time for something that was a 3 minute fix because the primary owner was not correct. Anyways I took my full 30 scheduled minutes to complete that task.
Looking up an error code is so hard, meanwhile they un synced and re-synced the laptop for aad. I felt bad for that poor lady
HealthySurgeon@reddit
lol sounds like you have your answer then :) Just a heads up, US engineers don't DELETE this issue, but it's certainly better and usually less time consuming.
dcaponegro@reddit
Support has gotten so bad over the last few years, even when paying a premium.
Cutoffjeanshortz37@reddit
When we do work with vendors we have to check with our Information Governments dept if where the vendors' tech is located can actually access our systems to do work. It's a 50/50 chance they'll get access; France, no problem, Russia, GTFO.
horus-heresy@reddit
I just escalate issue to us based support and leave negative feedback for offshore teams. I don't care, don't waste my time with script kiddies that have no idea how shit works
Ok-Tangelo4024@reddit
If I could pay some of our vendors to not talk to their offshore support I absolutely would.
horus-heresy@reddit
clients should have dropped this kind of dogshit company
leaflock7@reddit
its no secret that offshoring has led to decreased customer satisfaction. MS support sucks for example.
So if local support offers better quality but is more expensive then that's fine. But if it also sucks then it is a different story.
Offshoring is throwing people to lines in order to catch the incoming SLA. the resolution of the issue is another problem .
Immortal_Elder@reddit
I would be happy with either as long as they have support that knows their product line. I've noticed a decline in support across the board - US based and offshore. However, for me MSP for Office 365 and Meraki are the worst offenders recently.
Thebelisk@reddit
“users aren’t happy either. Just someone wants to save money”
You know you are contradicting yourself, right?
“Trust me”. Erm, no.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
I am users arnt happy getting placed into south east Asia call queues, users get us based support bean counters arnt happy there bill went up by 10-20k a month.
fozzy_de@reddit
Shocked /s
Tech_Mix_Guru111@reddit
Y’all all talking about do the math… no one in this sub is in a position to do anything that matters and any real math that matters is above y’all’s pay grade. C level would gladly hire 10 people for your 1 role even if it’s not as good of support… eventually someone will figure it out and they’ll hold the client hostage bc it’s too much trouble to move to another vendor
YaManMAffers@reddit
Yea. It’s totally worth it. You get support from people on your same time, so no responses at 9pm, and the language barrier is a big deal. We need to complete complex tasks with instructions. I need to be able to understand you without them having to repeat themselves 10 times.
thatfrostyguy@reddit
Yea this is actually awesome. I'd sign the dotted line